Beyond Recidivism: Examining the Impact of Social Policy Access on Justice-Involved Individuals' Health and Financial Outcomes

• In Event: Beyond Bars: Rethinking Reentry Through Policy, Partnership, and Practice

Abstract

For policymakers, advocates, and researchers, developing comprehensive policy interventions to address the harms caused by hyperincarceration is incredibly difficult. Over the last few decades in the United States, both political feasibility and high recidivism rates led to a plethora of initiatives targeting the reentry process. While an expansive literature has emerged exploring the effectiveness of these policies and programs in reducing recidivism, the relationship between policy design and recidivism is undertheorized and the mechanisms that have been proposed by researchers have remained largely untested. One reason for this is a lack of data linking the same individuals across all relevant outcomes. Based on a sample of over 200,000 people in Allegheny County, this study uses linked administrative data to answer the question: How do changes in states’ social policy environments impact individuals’ long-term material outcomes beyond recidivism? In exploring this question, I also interrogate whether and how social policy infrastructure may be mobilized against cycles of arrest and incarceration more broadly. I propose a reintegrative framework for theorizing this relationship, arguing that crime is merely a symptom of a broader system of socioeconomic deprivation and therefore requires a systems-level (rather than an individual-level) policy intervention. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I find that Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act led to substantial reductions in emergency department visits, mental health care visits, and mortality among people with and without justice contact, as well as a reduction in annual reincarceration. The reinstatement of a ban on access to welfare benefits for those convicted of drug felonies had more limited negative effects.

Author

• Michaela Ines Cushing-Daniels, University of Pittsburgh
  Presenting Author